Play The Field.

When you are a child, time seems to go by much slower when you want something. If you're going to an amusement park in a week, that week will seem more like a month. If you're getting McDonald's for lunch, those few hours will seem like days.

If you're waiting for your friend to come back, it seems like years. Of course, at this point, I had no idea what it truly felt like to go years without someone you loved, but those two months were absolute torture for me. Without Frank, I withdrew into myself at school. I know now that, if I'd tried to make other friends, I could have with ease; children are resilient creatures, it must be said. But I didn't want to make new friends; indeed, I didn't really want to do anything at all. Without Frank, everything had lost its lustre, its attractiveness. Recess, which had previously been my favorite part of the day, seemed useless when I didn't have Frank to play tag with or to push on the swing. When the teacher asked us to write a story, I didn't have any ideas whereas before, Frank and I were full of them.

Even math class seemed useless; I actually missed helping Frank with the problems. I just missed him, so much.

The only thing that I still put my heart into was soccer, although I was playing much more aggressively now. All of the anger I felt towards Frank's mom was pushed into the ball, slamming it into the goal over and over again. The gym of the YMCA wasn't enough to control my energy however and I found myself getting warned time and time again when I accidentally pushed someone over in my efforts to get the ball. At home, in the backyard where most people have erected a hockey rink, I shovelled off a rough rectangle to use as a soccer pitch, where I spent most of my nights, kicking the ball around until my toes were numb in my sneakers. After supper, once I'd had some time to recover, I'd go out and do it again until Mom screamed at me to come do my homework.

I didn't hear anything from Frank until the end of January, when he was allowed to talk to me on the phone for a few minutes. He told me that he was staying with another family for awhile, just until his dad put down a down payment on a house. He said that he shared the house with four other kids, all of whom smelled bad no matter how many times they had a bath.

"I'm afraid I'm going to smell like them," he said and we both giggled, the month's worth of anxiety behind us for the moment being. For the five minutes that we were allowed to speak, I was happy; completely and utterly happy. Knowing that Frank was doing okay made me feel a little less worried, for the moment. But as soon as he had to go, I burst into hysterical tears, still clutching the phone in my hands. Why couldn't he have just lived with us? We had shown before that we could take good care of him; why did he have to be put with some family who didn't even love him, a family that smelled bad? Mom tried to comfort me but I only got worse when my irrational mind made the connection; my Mom had made the phone call that had brought the so called Child Services to my house. It was her fault that Frank had gotten taken away from us.

"Go away!" I shrieked at her as she tried to hug me, wriggling free and running towards my room. "It's all your fault!"

I didn't go downstairs for dinner that night, even though the smell of lasagna was so tempting. Instead, I waited until Gerard and Joey (as always) came back upstairs before knocking on my brother's door.

"What's up Mikes?" Gerard and Joey were supposed to be working on a science fair project that was due that week but, from the looks of the room, they were planning an all night horror film fest, complete with popcorn and soda that Joey had snuck over and poorly hid underneath the bed.

"Could you do something for me?" Although Gerard was definitely growing up and often pushed me away, there were still times where he was my older brother, ready to protect me at a word's notice. He had shown this at the soccer match where he'd almost caused a fight, not caring about the consequences; I could only hope that his attitude was still the same.

Linda Iero was still living across the road, although I didn't understand why. I was certain that, when it was shown that she was hurting Frank, they would drag her off to jail and let her rot in a hole. However, I know now that the system is such a gnarled mess of communication and paperwork that things are never done that quickly and so, Linda was still in her house of horrors, prancing about in ever smaller skirts, puffy jackets covering up her scarred arms. She usually left early in the morning and came home late at night, when I should have been asleep. However, Gerard's bedtime was a whole hour later than mine, which only further helped my plan.

Two hours after asking him to please do something for me, Linda pulled into her driveway in her clunker of a car, lighting up a cigarette as she stepped out. Despite the fact that you could see her breath in the air, she was wearing a skirt, fishnets and wobbly looking high heels. She was unsteady on her feet, although that could have just been from the ridiculous shoes.

"Hey, you!" She didn't expect the voice; that much was evident from the way she turned her head. I pressed my face harder against the screen of the bathroom window, which looked across onto Linda's house.

"Yeah, you. You stupid, good for nothing bitch." I'd only wanted Gerard to call her a bitch before coming back inside but he seemed to be getting right into it from his position at the end of our driveway.

"Who are you?" The voice sounded lazy, if that was possible. She took another drag on her cigarette before putting it out, grinding it into the driveway with her shoe.

"Someone who thinks that people who hit their own children deserve to die. Rot in hell." With that, Gerard turned on his heel and marched back inside, slamming the front door hard enough to vibrate the windows slightly. I didn't move from my perch just yet; Linda was still standing in her driveway, teetering slightly, staring in the general direction of our house. Her eyes slowly raked upwards before locking with mine, making me gasp. She wasn't smiling; her face was a blank mask, giving nothing away.

I timidly raised my right hand and flicked the middle finger up, pressing it against the screen so that she was sure to see it. Then I ran off to bed, feeling adrenaline rushing through my body. From the sounds of things in the next room, Joey and Gerard were exchanging high fives and congratulatory words. I tried to sleep but my mind kept racing as they transitioned from one horror flick to the next. I didn't know why I'd given Linda the finger; it just seemed like the right thing to do but I knew that I should have felt bad. But I simply didn't.

I was able to talk to Frank again in the middle of February, although this conversation was just as short as our previous one. The school that he was temporarily attending was really cold apparently; he said that he had to wear his coat every day. His dad had found a house and he said that he'd able to come back to our school soon. The woman who was taking care of him was already yelling at him in the background by four and a half minutes, but he just ignored her, talking slightly louder so that I could better hear him.

"Hey Mikey?"

"Yeah?"

"It's Valentine's Day soon, right?" I had to look at the calendar tacked up beside the phone to see, and Frank was right; Valentine's Day was only in three days.

"Yeah, it's in three days. Why?" For a moment, I was quiet and I could hear a child yelling in the background, wailing about something or another.

"Well... even though I'm not there... could I be your Valentine? I don't want to be anyone else's. All the girls here are gross and the boys won't talk to me." I smiled; I hadn't even asked my mom to get me those cardboard Valentines that year. It had completely slipped my mind and besides, I didn't really care enough about anyone else in my class to give them a card.

"Of course Frank. I'll be your Valentine whenever you want me to be."

Three days later, I didn't bother going to school. I pretended that I was sick and, even though I'm pretty sure Mom saw through my act, she let me stay on the couch and watch cartoons while eating soup. When she came back from the post office, she had a small envelope with my name on it, written in red crayon. The address underneath it was more neatly printed in black pen but I nonetheless knew who it was from without even looking at the return address. Carefully opening the envelope, I gently pulled out a single sheet of paper, grinning before I'd even absorbed the whole image.

Frank had drawn a picture of me and him holding hands underneath a bright orange sun. At the bottom, he had written Be my best friend forever? Love, Frank. I brought the paper up to my face and inhaled the wax scent of the crayon. I felt bad that I hadn't sent Frank anything but now that I had his address, I set to work with a box of pencil crayons, drawing him a matching cartoon, although in mine we were standing on a grassy hill.

You'll always be my best friend. Love, Mikey.

If only things were that easy.